Cursive

Ever since Cursive burst onto the music scene with their 1997 debut album, the band has consistently and continually churned out heady albums heralded by critics and fans alike. Wrestling with life’s miseries and mysteries, Mama, I’m Swollen is an album brimming with the universal, questioning the human condition, social morality, and the ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ of grown men.

After the underground success of their third album, Cursive’s Domestica, in 2000, the band followed up with what would prove to be their breakthrough album, The Ugly Organ, in 2003. A self-aware conceptual record about artistic constraints (or lack thereof), relationships, sex, and the intersection of all three, it landed them on the Arts section cover of The New York Times and accolades from Rolling Stone, Alternative Press, Blender, Magnet, Esquire, and Spin – as well as a place on many year-end best lists. Cursive spent the next year and a half touring the album relentlessly, headlining the Plea For Peace tour and playing Coachella before being handpicked by The Cure for their Curiosa tour in late 2004.

Exhausted and admittedly daunted by the task of following up a hit record, Cursive went on an indefinite hiatus before remerging with the adventurous Happy Hollow in 2006. Lauded as a triumphant comeback and evolution of the band by publications such as Alternative Press, Spin, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Blender, the album examined small-town angst, American dreams, and religion. Midway through touring in early 2007, original drummer Clint Schnase amicably departed the band. After a short break following a national tour with Mastodon and Against Me! and feeling somewhat conflicted about proceeding forward without him, Tim Kasher (vocals, guitar), Matt Maginn (bass, vocals), and Ted Stevens (guitar, vocals) decided to begin writing – only without the ambitions of necessarily turning it into the next Cursive record. Shortly thereafter, Cornbread Compton (formerly of Engine Down) officially signed on as drummer by this time and what musically unfolded from this newly realized foursome was indeed…Cursive.

Conceived together in intermittent rehearsals as the band is now spread out across the west and Midwest (Kasher and Compton live in Los Angeles, CA; Maginn in Columbia, MO; and Stevens in Omaha, NE), they road-tested and refined the new material for Mama, I’m Swollen largely via a few shows this past spring and summer. The band’s new process resulted in a more enthusiastic and focused set of ten songs to record when they entered Mike Mogis’ ARC Studios in Omaha, NE in the fall, producing the album themselves alongside AJ Mogis.

Kasher is a storyteller, a weaver of songs that can read more like short stories or fables than the standard verse-chorus-verse. Mama, I’m Swollen finds him at his literate, lyrical best, where references to both Poe (“Going To Hell”) and Pinocchio (“Donkeys”) are intertwined seamlessly within his own tales of characters grappling with the moral quandary of being human, adult, and playing a role in ‘civilized’ society. Musically, Cursive is as smart and sophisticated as ever, the songs’ rousing, cerebral content complemented by moments alternately hushed and exhilarating (the cathartic “From The Hips,” the noisily melodic romp “I Couldn’t Love You”), eerily moody and jaunty (the almost prayer-like “Let Me Up,” “Mama, I’m Swollen”) – moments that often occur within the very same song. From the charging bass lines of album opener “In The Now” to the quiet first chords of confessional closer “What Have I Done?”, Mama, I’m Swollen is a natural progression that remains distinctively Cursive: a fluid amalgamation of the band’s sound past, present, and future – a band that both your punk kid sister and English lit grad student best friend can call their own.

Whew. Mama, I’m Swollen is also one very simple thing: an amazing Cursive record, proving yet again why – after all these years – the quartet remains one of the most exciting and inventive rock bands today.

As early as 1995, the original members of Cursive -- Tim Kasher on guitar and vocals, Clint Schnase on drums, Matt Maginn on bass, and Stephen Pederson on guitar -- began work on their newly christened project, experimenting with elements of indie rock and eclectic post-hardcore to fashion a unique sound. The Omaha, NE-based four-piece came out of existing friendships and some of the members' previous work together in Slowdown Virginia, making the musical partnership a logical idea from the start. They debuted with the Disruption 7" on the local friend-run label Saddle Creek and shortly released a second 7", Sucker and Dry, on New York-based Zero Hour. Both recordings spotlighted Kasher's uniquely powerful voice along with the group's consistently thundering rhythm section and jagged guitars. Cursive went even further on their debut full-length, Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes. Split-released by Crank! A Record Company and New York's Interplanetary Truckers Union in 1997, the LP received high acclaim and put the band on the musical map.

Over the next year, Cursive released both a split 10" with Austin's Silver Scooter (also on Crank!) and yet another 7" entitled Disruption. The latter record began the band's extensive future with Saddle Creek, and in November of 1998, the label released the group's second full-length, The Storms of Early Summer: Semantics of Song. The LP saw the band's first real attempt at incorporating linked lyrical concepts, as Kasher's lyrics told the tale of a man's complete breakdown over the aggressive song structures. Unfortunately for their growing fan base, the record didn't even yield a tour and instead saw the members disband to work on other projects, with no mention of a reunion at some later date.

After the temporary split, the members of Cursive explored a number of different outlets (including Commander Venus and Bright Eyes). After a failed marriage and some real introspection, however, the group decided to give things another shot, a fortunate conclusion that in June of 2000 resulted in the realization of Domestica. Full of fractured rhythms and lyrical examinations of a couple's crumbling relationship, the album spun a story that carried an odd familiarity to the real life experiences of Kasher. Domestica also introduced a new Cursive member, vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Ted Stevens, formerly of Lullaby for the Working Class. (Pederson bowed out of the group to continue his education at Duke University; he later formed White Octave.)

Novena on a Nocturn, the debut of Kasher's solo project, the Good Life, was released in 2001. Also notable was the release of another Cursive EP, Burst and Bloom, which added cellist Gretta Cohn to the band's lineup. Meanwhile, Cursive were featured on the first 7" in Makato Recordings' yearlong monthly 7" series, and the quintet returned in 2003 with The Ugly Organ. Their most ambitious album to date, The Ugly Organ was hailed for its challenging songwriting, obtuse conceptual scope, and serious lyrical turns. As the band readied a worthy follow-up album, Saddle Creek issued Difference Between Houses and Homes in August 2005, assembling Cursive's out of print 7"s (including two unreleased songs) into a stopgap compilation. Happy Hollow ultimately arrived in 2006, marking the departure of Cohn but also the inclusion of a brass section, which the band utilized to explore religious contradictions within the context of a fictional Western town. The following year, founding drummer Clint Schnase left Cursive on good terms and was replaced by touring drummer Cornbread Compton, and the band continued onward with its revised lineup, ringing in 2009 with the release of Mama, I'm Swollen. ~ Peter J. D'Angelo, All Music Guide